About Time

April 14th, 2014

President Obama:

Across the country Republicans have led efforts to making harder not easier for people to vote. … The real voter fraud is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud. … America did not stand up and did not march and did not sacrifice to gain the right to vote for themselves and for others only to see it denied to their kids and their grandchildren. We’ve got to pay attention to this. … This recent effort to restrict the vote has not been led by both parties. It’s been led by the Republican Party.

Welcome to the party, many years late. This issue is long overdue for top-level attention.

The appalling fact here is that the attempt to restrict voting and deny people their rights is not even well-disguised; despite the hue and cry about fictional “voter fraud,” it is about as easy as it imaginably could be to see that this is all a political ploy to win elections. Several conservative politicians have actually said as much, publicly, on the record.

That the media does not reflect this as well as it should, and worse, that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court should so transparently enable this affront to Democracy… well, it is simply beyond the ability of mere words to express.

Courts should be shutting down these obscenities as soon as they pop up. Alas, such justice is now a rare commodity. This, taken together with gerrymandering and a full-blown propaganda tool masquerading as a national news organization, what we have is not even close to proportional or representative government.